The shameful sin of apostasy.
Apostasy is repeatedly compared to adultery by the Old Testament prophets, but the comparison is nowhere so full and powerful and even appalling as in this long sixteenth chapter of Ezekiel, which consists in an elaborate indictment of Israel on that terrible charge. A mealy mouthed modern fastidiousness resents this style of describing sin as though to name it were more shameful than to commit it, for the fact of apostasy from God is by no means excluded when the old name for it is condemned as too coarse for polite society. It may be well for us to brace up our nerves to endure the strong words on the sin of unfaithfulness to God which the inspired messengers of Jehovah felt themselves impelled to utter. In what respects, then, may apostasy be compared to that shameful thing, adultery?
I. IT PRESUPPOSES A MARRIAGE RELATION BETWEEN GOD AND HIS PEOPLE. That relation has been described with graphic pictures in the preceding verses. God had. chosen Israel in her forlorn condition as a miserable castaway chard, reared her in kindness, and then adorned her with splendour and taken her home to himself as his bride. In like manner, all God's people have been first found by him, and then brought into the closest bonds of union with himself. Such a union with God is like marriage, because it implies
II. IT CONSISTS IN UNFAITHFULNESS TO GOD. The people of God are not at liberty to leave him whenever they choose.
1. Love should bind them. There is no such thing as innocent "free love" under any circumstances; for love always implies obligations. Its bonds may be soft and silken, but they are strong and sacred. God's love to us, accepted by us, carries with it a duty of gratitude and loyalty.
2. The pledges of faith must ever bind God's people to the duty of cleaving to him. When we accept the blessings of the gospel we enter into a covenant relation like that of marriage vows.
III. IT SPRINGS FROM YIELDING TO A LOWER LOVE. God's people do not forsake him from weariness or without motive. But some fatal fascination lures the heart of the foolish wife from her true husband. In the case of Israel this was the sensuous and florid idolatry of the Canaanites, with its coarse, cruel, lustful charms. Anything that draws us from God by counter attractions is an "idol of the heart." Money, pleasure, power, success, may thus deceive and destroy. Yet a prior condition of unfaithfulness is the failing of love to God. "How weak is thine heart!"
IV. IT IS A GREAT SIN. Adultery is confessedly a black and awful sin, standing side by side with murder, as a horror of great wickedness. So, according to the Hebrew prophets, is unfaithfulness to God. As we are not free to forsake hint who has inn chased us at the great cost of his own Son, and to whom we are doubly bound by the ties of our own vows, to "change our mind" in this matter and fling up our religion is not a light affair of private convenience. In the sight of God it is adultery.
V. IT IS A PECULIAR SOURCE OF SHAME AND SORROW. No sin is so shameful as that of adultery, and none brings in its train such heart-rending sorrow.
1. It is shameful to be unfaithful to God; for it outrages the deepest instincts of the soul and violates the secret sanctuary of life.
2. It is certainly a source of bitter sorrow, if not now, yet hereafter; for it means banishment from the home of heaven, with the pangs of remorse to gnaw like a worm, long after the short pleasures of sin have sunk to ashes.